


These sunless afternoons I can't find myself

by jonnimir



Series: Kinkterror: A Month of Erotic Horror [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst, Captivity, Conditioning, Dark Will Graham, Dubiously Consensual Blow Jobs, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gaslighting, Hurt/Comfort/Hurt, M/M, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Panic Attacks, Psychological Torture, Sensory Deprivation, Starvation, Stockholm Syndrome, Traumatized Hannibal, Whump, drug-induced amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-07 19:01:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20980808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonnimir/pseuds/jonnimir
Summary: Hannibal tried to blink away the blurriness that was staining his vision, lost in a sea of blinding light. His head was equally foggy, the corridors of his memory palace turned liquid, oozing out at the seams. He couldn’t remember what they’d just been talking about—he couldn’t remember anything except Will’s voice, firm and steady, and the sense of unease that now swamped him.





	These sunless afternoons I can't find myself

**Author's Note:**

> Kinkterror Week 2: Psychological Horror (Captive + Psychological Manipulation + Mindbreak)
> 
> This is extremely dark, and much heavier on terror than kink. Please mind the tags and the harder-to-summarize warnings below.
> 
> **Additional warnings** (read the main tags too!): Graphic flashback to child death and mutilation/cannibalism. Exploitation of sensory triggers. One scene of urine ingestion via feeding tube. Implied physical abuse in addition to less direct on-screen torture that includes starvation, sleep deprivation, locking in a freezer, etc. Will basically "breaking" Hannibal through exploiting his trauma, using psychological conditioning, altering his memories, cultivating Stockholm syndrome, and so on.

“You were telling me about your childhood.”

Hannibal tried to blink away the blurriness that was staining his vision, lost in a sea of blinding light. His head was equally foggy, the corridors of his memory palace turned liquid, oozing out at the seams. He couldn’t remember what they’d just been talking about—he couldn’t remember anything except Will’s voice, firm and steady, and the sense of unease that now swamped him.

“I was,” Hannibal said, tentative but not about to reveal his level of disorientation. He frowned and licked his lips. They were parched, his mouth itself far too dry.

“You were,” Will repeated, voice patient. “Tell me about—”

…

“Mischa,” Hannibal whispered into the darkness. There was nothing around him, absolutely nothing, just a pit of black and buzzing and _cold_. His hands were tied and his shoulders cramped against the wall, his feet pulled in. Somewhere too small and frigid. Pain crisscrossed his flesh like spiderwebs and his feet felt like they were flayed, and his head was an ache of exhaustion. How long had he been awake?

Before this, it had been a vague chaos of light and noise and everything too much. Then he had been told to be good, and a cloth had been wrapped around his eyes, and he had been locked in this place. The silence and dark had been a relief for a moment, but even now he couldn’t sleep. Not just because of the pain, not just because of the cold, but because these sensations were accompanied by a body-wrenching ache of hunger.

He knew cold, and he knew starvation. He knew both of these things so well that his bones were etched with the memories, but he could usually keep them under lock and key. He could tolerate cold, though he always dressed very warmly, swaddling himself in layers of expensive overcoats, scarves, hats, and gloves. He could tolerate hunger, though his meals were regimented and indulgent nowadays, so it was not something he suffered in excess. But the two, together—the way the cold eating at his skin teamed up with the chills radiating from his organs, the carved-out hollow feeling like a black hole was devouring him from within, the weakness and shakiness and lightheadedness all gathered together with the way his extremities were so badly gnawed by ice that they began to burn—this was him, when he was a child, when he thought the winter was never going to end. When he tried his best to survive and help his sister survived and he failed, in the worst way. When he first learned the meaning of fear, before he had yet learned how to avenge himself. When he was too small, too frail, too weak from starvation to fight back.

“Mischa,” he whispered again, because her ghost was strong here: the afterimage of her eyes swollen with tears, the smell of her blood, the ragged sticky edges where her flesh had been severed beneath her chin, because the men who killed her had no use for a part of her from which they could cleave no meat—or perhaps from superstitions, deep rooted in those rural regions, that the soul of a person remained in their head after death, at least for a few days.

But Hannibal knew from those months of survival that an animal’s brain could still have some nutritional value, and her murderers had not deigned to share the precious meat they had taken with a boy who was on death’s door himself. So he dug her head from the snow, cradled the baby fat of her cheeks, and struck her skull with a stone until he could dig free the grey matter within. If her soul remained there, he would consume it, and she could stay with him forever.

But still. When his shaking fingers brought the first piece to his mouth, hunger twisted into nausea.

With nothing to see or hear in the present, the memories of the past were as strong as if they were happening now. The smell of death, his frostbitten fingers. The clawing fear that even this act would not be enough, and that he would soon lose this battle, alone.

His breath emptied from him all at once. He gasped for more, and it tore itself again from his lungs with a ragged, desperate noise. And again. Short. Shallow. Faster and faster he gasped, struggling for air that only burned his lungs with its cold, and his body rocked as he clutched at his knees. His head bashed against the wall with a heavy thunk and then he was dazed, blinking in blackness that suddenly swarmed with hundreds of pinpricks of light.

He tasted salt on his lips, and when he rubbed the back of his hand over his face it was damp. It had been so long since he had last cried from pain, emotional or otherwise, it had been—

Perhaps not so long after all, for the sensation did not feel so alien as he would have expected. When had he cried? What had happened to him? Logic told him he was not in his childhood past, no matter his body’s alarm, but logic was scant, feathered with exhaustion and panic.

But that just made it worse, that vague awareness that he was _somewhere_, that _someone_ must have done this to him, but that he had no memory of where, or who, or what had happened. He couldn’t place his last rational memory. It felt like years since he had seen his office or tasted a home-cooked meal, but surely he should have memories to fill those years?

It wasn’t a line of thought he could sustain for long. He descended again into hyperventilation, until he fell nearly unconscious, worn down and utterly wrung out by the assault of fear and hunger and cold.

When light came, filtered through the cloth over his eyes, and warmth, and a human touch and voice, he was shaking like a leaf. He began crying again, both utterly relieved and horribly confused.

“It’s okay, Hannibal,” came the soothing voice. Will. “I’m here for you.”

He could do nothing but cling to his warmth, not caring why Will was here so much as the fact that he was, and he had Hannibal, and he didn’t have to suffer in that frigid hell anymore.

A soft, heavy blanket wrapped around his shoulders, and it was only then that he realized they were bare. Will held him until he stopped shaking so badly, rubbing the back of his neck persistently.

“I’m here for you,” he repeated, and Hannibal believed him.

“You did better that time,” Will said, voice pensive, and something in Hannibal’s mind caught on the word—there had been another time? “First time you bruised yourself pretty badly trying to get out. Maybe part of you remembered it was pointless.”

Hannibal’s stomach clenched, and chills ran across his skin all over again. No, this was wrong. Something was wrong. Will couldn’t have—

He began to pull against Will’s grasp just a bit, confused, alarmed.

“Shhh.”

There was a sudden pinch of a needle in his upper arm, and he cried out, shocked at the sudden turn.

“This will help you forget,” Will said gently. “And let you get some sleep. Then we can start again.”

Hannibal tried to make his mouth form words, tried to pull together a single question—but he was already slipping away, only a vague noise coming from his throat before he descended into darkness.

…

Hannibal was lucid enough to know he was held captive, and must have been for a long time, because he was missing vast stretches of memory that were vanished or jumbled beyond recognition. He was shackled and kept on a small cot. It was dark, and that made him anxious for reasons he couldn’t quite place—he hadn’t had any fear of the dark since he was a very young child indeed.

When the light came on and Will appeared, without any shackles of his own, Hannibal knew, logically, that meant Will was the one holding him captive. The aches on his body resolved themselves into more definite forms in the light: bruises on his arms and new scars on his bare torso, with his stomach flatter than he remembered it being. He knew that circumstances suggested Will had been the cause. But despite the roiling mix of emotions when Will came, he didn’t hate him—he felt apprehension and a hint of fear, but also relief, a hint of excitement. When Will smiled at him he was strangely happy, hopeful, genuinely pleased that Will was here.

“How are you feeling today?” Will asked. He kept a respectable distance, surely knowing that even without hatred, Hannibal was repulsed by the concept of being captive. He would have found a way to get a hold of Will, and gain his release, and reverse their positions. That way he could enjoy Will’s company with a much less bitter tone.

“Hungry. Disoriented. But I sense that was intentional.”

Will made a noncommittal noise.

“Are you responsible for these marks?” Hannibal asked, gesturing at them.

Will nodded. “I thought pain might get through to you. I was wrong. Physical torture isn’t effective for you, you just lock yourself up in your memory palace.”

“I could have told you that and saved you the trouble.”

“You could have, but you didn’t. Weren’t feeling very cooperative that day.”

“I wouldn’t know. I seem to have no recollection of the day in question.” Will looked unsurprised by that. “How long have you held me here? And how long will you continue?”

“I’ll keep going until your penance is finished. And it started when you killed Abigail. For real, this time. Do you remember that part?” He did, though everything since was unclear. “You killed her, and asked if I would forgive you. And I do.” There was too much bile in that statement for it to be true. “Will you forgive me?”

“I can’t forgive you without knowing what you’ve done to me. There are pieces missing in my memory palace. I assume you’re responsible.”

“You’re too dangerous with your memories intact. If you know everything I’ve done, you can anticipate what I’ll do next, and I’ll be at a disadvantage. Having the whole picture just creates problems for me.”

“So you fragment me instead? To what end? How could you deny me my life, or my freedom, after everything we’ve been through?”

Will looked at him, face stony but leaning into sorrow. “Because I wouldn’t let a dog loose if I knew it would bite people, and I wouldn’t stand by and let it be destroyed if it did. I’d keep it close. I’d keep it chained, if it was the only way to keep us both safe.”

Hannibal frowned at the comparison. “I am not a dog.”

“No, you’re not. You’re smarter and harder to train. You don’t respond to praise alone. I can’t expect you to eat out of my hand without taking off a couple fingers, not as you are now.”

“You’d have to break me entirely,” Hannibal said, defiance heavy in his voice. “And that wouldn’t be an easy task.”

Will smiled, grim enough to make Hannibal’s stomach flutter. “I know,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy the process.”

Later he injected Hannibal with a drug that left him fuzzy and weak, and carted him away in a wheelchair to an empty room with what looked like an old freezer standing tall and ominous in the corner.

Will put a blindfold over his eyes, clicked his tongue and said, “Be a good boy, Hannibal,” and jerked him forward by his wrist, and Hannibal’s heart sank. Then he was left with just the dark, the cold, and the pit in his stomach that would grow to consume him whole.

…

Hannibal let Will touch him, but he was uneasy. He felt like he was suspended in a cloudy vat of aspic—frozen in place, part of some tableau that he could see neither start nor finish of.

“You need to change clothes and bathe,” Will said firmly.

Hannibal looked down, and saw a t-shirt and sweatpants that were sweat-stained and dirty. He smelled the air, and frowned at the rancid note. The old sweat had the sourness of fear. “Why am I dressed like this?”

“You’ve been sick.”

“For how long? Why can’t I—”

He looked at his wrists more closely. They were thinner than they should have been, and looked reddened by friction, rubbed raw and barely healed.

“Have I been bound?” he asked. 

Will exhaled, brow tight. Hannibal could sense his impatience—he looked tired. Finally, he said, “Yes.”

“Will, you need to tell me what—”

“No more questions, Hannibal,” Will snapped, but Hannibal wasn’t about to less this slide. He was confused, disoriented—nothing made sense. He needed answers. Why wasn’t Will answering?

When Will next moved to tug at his shirt, Hannibal slapped his hand away with a growl.

Will’s eyes flashed, and he grabbed Hannibal’s wrist hard enough to hurt the raw skin.

He clicked his tongue. “Be a good boy, Hannibal,” he said in a wire-taut voice.

Hannibal suddenly felt like the air had been snatched from his lungs.

He froze, eyes wide, unbreathing. His skin was crawling, and that itself was alarming—nothing that had transpired should make him feel so panicked, he should feel nothing but anger at being treated like this. And yet… he didn’t know what it was, what this vague horror was lurking at the edge of his unconsciousness, but it was nothing good. It was shapeless, indistinct, just a looming shadow of something monstrous, but enough for the primal sort of fear that humans get when facing some growling thing with fangs and claws.

Something bad had happened, and he didn’t know what it was. He was stuck like that, stock-still and unbreathing, as he feverishly pawed through the corridors of his mind for an answer. Nothing, nothing recent enough, nothing traceable. Empty rooms—no, not just rooms. Something so bad should have its entire wing, but it wasn’t there. His memories had been taken from him, and that was more alarming than anything he could have suffered individually.

“Feels bad, doesn’t it,” Will said in a low voice. “Losing time. Feeling like bits of your life have gone missing. Knowing someone has been rummaging around in your brain uninvited.”

“You did this,” Hannibal said, voice choked with horror. “What did you do to me?”

“What I had to do.” Will sighed. “You’re not done yet. I hoped I could finally do this with you awake, but…”

Before Hannibal knew what was happening, he had a syringe drawn and plunged into his arm. And then the world went black.

…

There was a freezer in an empty room, and Hannibal was gripped with inexplicable fear.

“Be a good boy,” Will said, slipping a blindfold over his eyes and giving a squeeze to his wrist, and then the fear was like a tidal wave, engulfing him and leaving him far from light and air. Whatever awaited him was bad, unimaginably bad, a horror he hadn’t faced in years but felt as vivid as if it had happened yesterday.

Will tried to pull him up and drag him into the freezer, but Hannibal grasped at him. At least his hands were not bound, though he felt weak.

“No,” he gasped. “No Will, please. Anything, I’ll do anything. No.”

He couldn’t remember having begged for anything since he was a whining child.

Will paused. “Do you remember the last time we did this?”

Hannibal shook his head. He couldn’t remember any time at all. “I just know I can’t do it again.”

Will opened the freezer door, and the blast of cold air raised goosebumps on Hannibal’s arms and made his fear intensify.

“Will—anything, anything else. Not in there, please.” He was barely coherent, words tripping over each other.

Will paused again, as if seriously considering this, and Hannibal clutched at a small spark of hope.

“Only 3 minutes this time,” Will said. “If you’re good. Can you be good?”

“Yes,” Hannibal said, though he had only the vaguest idea of what might qualify as “good” under these circumstances. “Yes, I can, Will—please.”

Once he was inside and the lock clicked into place, there was still terror. Flashbacks. Tears freezing on his face. But he could remind himself—Will, Will, Will. Will would rescue him from hell in just minutes. He didn’t scream, and he didn’t struggle. He could be good.

And then Will opened the door, pulling him from the freezer and wrapping him in a blanket.

“It’s okay, Hannibal,” Will said soothingly, petting the nape of his neck. “I’m here.”

Even knowing otherwise, it felt for all the world as if Will was rescuing him and wished for nothing but his safety and comfort. Hannibal could have sobbed in relief, warmth and gratitude rushing through him.

“Thank you,” he said, clinging to him. “Thank you, Will.”

Will made a thoughtful noise, and was silent for a moment, though he gathered Hannibal in his arms, rubbing over exposed skin to bring friction and warmth. “I like seeing you like this,” he said. “Grateful. Like you’d do anything for a bit of kindness.”

“Yes,” Hannibal whispered, not sure what he was agreeing to. He felt lightheaded, delirious from hunger and exhaustion and utter relief. “Anything, Will. Anything but that.”

“Anything?”

“Anything. What do you need from me, Will?”

There was silence for a moment. Then, “I don’t need anything more from you, Hannibal.”

He stood up. A rejection.

Hannibal turned and blindly grabbed at his leg, burying his face in his thigh. “Don’t leave me,” he said. “Don’t make me go there again.”

Will tried to pull away, and Hannibal held tighter and nuzzled into him. He paused when Will gasped, and tried to get his bearings. He realized he was no longer pressed into his thigh, but his groin.

He nudged in again, and Will’s hand went to his hair, but he didn’t pull him away.

“Is this what you want from me, Will?” His chest was tight; it might have been hope.

Will was silent, his breathing heavy. It wasn’t a denial.

“Let me,” Hannibal breathed. “Please, let me.”

He couldn’t distinguish between a desire to make Will feel good and a survival instinct that thrummed through his veins and implored him to make himself useful, desirable, something that couldn’t just be abandoned and left to freeze and die.

He grasped blindly for Will’s fly. Once he found it and his fingers settled on the button, he hesitated. He didn’t want to step too far and be reprimanded. But Will didn’t tell him to stop.

“Go on, then,” Will said, and his voice sounded husky, thick with emotion or arousal, or both.

Hannibal released the breath he’d been holding and undid the button, unzipped the fly. His sinuses were still clogged from crying, he couldn’t smell him, but when he pulled the rough denim down and felt for the cotton waistband and pulled that layer down too, he could feel heat when he leaned in.

His fingers clumsily felt their way through the new landscape, over rough pubic hair and soft skin, and secured themselves around Will’s length, dragging up and down—none too softly, too anxious with desperation to take a slow route, too eager to prove himself.

Will hissed. “Gently,” he said, and Hannibal winced.

He tried to be gentle, and he turned his head until it butted against his lips and he could open and lick. It tasted different. It had been a long time—a very long time—since Hannibal had last found himself on his knees like this. Not since an inadvisable liaison in his youth that ended very bloody and with Hannibal’s pride stitching itself back together. Not the best precedent, but none of that mattered now. He’d do what he could.

Will pushed himself forward into Hannibal’s mouth, hard and ready, and he opened for him. Will’s thrusts started shallow, exploratory. His hand crept over Hannibal’s skull and to the back of his neck, where he rubbed gently, and Hannibal felt another rush of warmth. He relaxed into it, reassured that he was doing well.

Will eased back. His fingers went to Hannibal’s mouth, instead, and Hannibal sucked them in, eager to please him. When he felt Will’s fingers reach all the way to his tonsils he gagged, but let it happen, even when tears brimmed in his eyes again.

“You’d let me do anything?” Will asked again. He withdrew his fingers and Hannibal nodded. Anything to keep him from that place.

“Get up.”

Hannibal stumbled to his feel, and Will took him by the shoulders and turned him with a gentle push.

“This way.”

Hannibal walked where Will guided him, noticing the cold, coarse surface of concrete beneath his feet, until Will finally said. “Stop. Kneel here.”

He obeyed, though he winced as his knees settled into concrete.

He heard a clatter of objects, the sound of drawers opening and closing, but he was still effectively blind. Anticipation and nerves crawled over his skin, wondering how bad this could be.

“Open,” Will said, and Hannibal did.

Not far enough, apparently, because Will’s fingers quickly pried his jaws further apart and forced something cold and hard between them that clicked against his teeth. It fed into the corners of his mouth and kept his teeth and lips wide open. Tentatively touching his tongue against it, it tasted like steel. A dental gag, perhaps.

“Stay,” Will said, and Hannibal heard his steps moving further away, until he couldn’t hear them at all. It occurred to Hannibal that he was unsupervised now. He could remove his blind, the gag, try to find an escape from whatever torture this was. But he didn’t know how long he’d been captive, how many other times he must have tried and failed. And he feared consequences. Will had found a way to genuinely hurt him—and maybe that was a direct result of something Hannibal had done in the first place, a punishment for some crime he’d since forgotten. He didn’t know, he couldn’t know. And he couldn’t risk it.

So he stayed, even when his knees began to ache and he felt drool spilling out over the gag and trailing down his chin. He could hear it drip onto the concrete, and he winced to think how pathetic he must look right now.

Footsteps came again, and he braced himself.

When he heard the croaking noise of corrugated plastic tubing, he felt a chill.

“You recognize that sound?” Will asked. His voice had gone cold. “You used something similar on me. I remembered, eventually.”

Hannibal couldn’t respond with his mouth pried open, of course. But Will spoke with certainty.

“Back then you shoved an ear down my throat. Want to know what I plan to shove down yours?”

Hannibal’s stomach flipped. He tried to steady his breath.

“Originally, I thought I could cut off your ear, or one of your fingers, and feed it to you, but I don’t have your surgical experience. I don’t want you bleeding out or getting infected.”

That was some relief, though small.

Will didn’t clarify what he’d ultimately decided on before sliding a tube into Hannibal’s mouth, then tilting his head all the way back so it could slide straight down into his throat.

It was deeply uncomfortable, enough that Hannibal nearly grabbed at the tube to remove it—he realized his hands were not secured, Will wanted him to choose to endure this. The plastic tubing scraped along the sensitive lining of his esophagus and he made wretched gagging noises, tearing up again. It was perhaps not so large as the tube he had used to place an ear in Will’s stomach, but it was bad enough as it was.

It took every ounce of self-control to not struggle further. When it was fully in place and Will made a satisfied hum, Hannibal could barely breathe. His fingers wrung themselves into fists, scraping at his palms, and his throat continued to clench and hack against the tubing.

“When you started pawing at me, I thought of doing this with my cum,” Will said in an undertone. “If you wanted it so badly, I’d give it to you. Just not on your terms.”

Hannibal’s hands grasped at his own thighs, clutching for balance. He would have groaned if he could make any proper noise pass through the contraption. At least what Will was suggesting didn’t sound too terrible. Not unbearable. He would have assumed Will would have him swallow it anyway.

“But that wouldn’t be enough,” Will continued, and Hannibal’s stomach turned itself into a new knot, as best as it could while it was still trying to heave. “I don’t think you’d find my cum repulsive enough for that to make it worthwhile. It wouldn’t demonstrate if you were actually willing to do _anything_.”

Hannibal heard his fly unzip, and his mind raced. There were only so many things Will could do that followed logically but weren’t cum, and he didn’t like the direction this was going.

“_Piss_, on the other hand…”

His stomach soured. He tried to shake his head in denial, because this was too disgusting a degradation for him to tolerate, but Will grabbed a handful of his hair to steady him. When he heard the first few drops drizzle into the echoing plastic tube, his hands shot up to seize it, desperately hoping to pull it out before the fluid could reach his stomach.

But Will clicked his tongue sharply and his hand flew to grip the back of Hannibal’s neck, at the same time as he hissed, “be a _good boy_, Hannibal.”

And Hannibal’s mind ground to stop, suspended in utterly conflicting reflexes of deep fear and grateful submission. He froze, unable to do more than monitor the strange, uneven leaps of his heart while listening to the drizzle resume, and then speed to a steady stream.

The tubing must have been thin, because he could feel the heat of urine passing over his tongue and into his throat, though he could taste nothing.

His hands fell limp and useless on his thighs as Will filled his stomach with piss. Even after the shock wore off, there was no point trying to fight anymore; the damage was done.

When Will removed the tube, his stomach heaved again and again without success. Revulsion hung heavy in his stomach. Will pet over his skin and repeated “that’s it” soothingly, like he was an anxious dog.

“If you weren’t so stubborn, I wouldn’t have to do these things to you,” Will said. “Maybe next time I’ll give you cum instead, as a reward if you’re good.”

Will let him keep his memories that time—he said Hannibal needed to remember how to cooperate so he could learn.

Hannibal didn’t have to like it. But he learned.

…

Hannibal is tired, but he feels safe, his stomach full and settled. He comes to sitting next to Will on a cot in an empty room. Will is reading a book, its title obscured, and petting through his hair.

“What happened?” Hannibal asks. “I can’t remember how I got here.”

Will pauses his reading and sighs. “I know,” he says. “You hit your head, got a mild concussion. You’ve been in and out of lucidity all week.”

Hannibal frowns. “That sounds more than mild. If I haven’t had improvement in that time, I should see a neurologist.”

Will nods, looking troubled. “I know. But you can’t—we’re on the run, you have to stay inside where no one can recognize you. Don’t you remember that, either?”

He searches his memory. Empty rooms and ringing silence in his palace. His forehead creases, and his heart sinks.

“We left… we left Baltimore. We were running.”

“Yes.”

“Is Abigail with us?”

“No. She isn’t.”

“We were going to surprise you.”

“You did. And then you killed her. Do you remember why?”

Hannibal takes a moment, scraping through his memories. He knows he planned to kill Abigail as her father had, cutting her throat. And sure enough, he finds a matching memory. Her standing before him, trusting. His hand sliding the curved blade around her throat until blood spilled to the floor.

But why?

He remembers being angry. Disappointed. Sad.

“Was I punishing you?”

Will grimaces. “In a way. You were testing me.”

“Trying to goad you into trying to kill me?”

“Probably. You wanted to see if I’d break. See where my loyalties lay. You wanted to see if I could forgive you for the unforgiveable.”

Will seems affectionate enough, but he has to ask. “And have you?”

“It took a while, but yes. I forgive you,” Will says. His voice is soft and even, and he doesn’t break eye contact, and Hannibal believes him. He can practically feel his heart swelling in response—it is a relief even greater than he would have expected to have Will’s approval, his forgiveness.

Will’s hand strokes against his cheek, and Hannibal shivers and leans into the contact with more desperation than he thought was possible. As if he was starved of affection until it meant more to him than anything else.

He kisses Will’s wrist and elbow, breathes in and fills with desire.

“Let me,” he says as his hands go to Will’s fly, automatic and unthinking, though he doesn’t know why he is asking in this way.

Will lets him, and Hannibal takes him into his mouth. He feels familiar, his taste and his shape, and Hannibal knows they must have done this many times before. He wishes he could remember the first time this happened, or any time, really.

When he tries to take Will deeper in and his throat clenches in apprehension, he feels a cold curdle of anxiety that arises from nowhere and makes him pull back with a shiver. Something has gone wrong here, somewhere along the line, and it unnerves him.

“Will, has this ever…”

He doesn’t know how to finish that question. He wants to know if it’s ever been less than consensual, but he hesitates to make such an accusation when he has no memories to back it up.

Will gentles him with a hand on the back of his neck, rubbing in small strokes, and Hannibal feels a rush of love and gratitude, his concerns fading into the background.

“I’m here for you, Hannibal,” Will says. “And I love you.”

It sounds just as sincere as his forgiveness.

**Author's Note:**

> Finally did the thing where I stole some lyrics for a title, this was inevitable. It was thanks to Richey Edwards that I came across some quality dark erotic content when I was younger - Octave Mirbeau's Torture Garden, JG Ballard's Crash, Dennis Cooper's Frisk, etc. - so it seemed somehow appropriate for Kinkterror.
> 
> Thanks for reading, I hope it wasn't too confusing! If there's anything more I can tag/warn for to better prepare people for this one, feel free to let me know.


End file.
